Been lurking for a while but never posted. I posted this information over on the ROG forums, and thought that I would relay it here as well. Sorry for my crappy explenations, never have been good at explaining stuff. I tend to ramble as well. Anywho here is how to get rid of the throttling at the bios level. This should work for any sandybridge laptop that has an ami aptio bios, if someone wants this for another system that doesnt use ami aptio send me the bios file and what type of bios you have (Phoenix, Award) and I will see wether we can do this for you as well. Sorry for the length of what follows (I ramble) but it is easiest for me to copy and paste my threads from ROG at this time (still busy investigating the optimus situation at the moment, someone please tell me or prove to me this cant be done so I can give up already).

Fix throttle issue in BIOS YOURSELF.

Ok, enough is enough, Asus please learn to program bioses and research what customer service means.... Anyone who wants to disable BD-PROCHOT at the bios level it is very easy to do yourself. Firstly you will need AMIBCP version 4.5. Using this program open whatever version of bios you wish to use on your particular computer (ie most recent for you particular sandybridge gXX). Under the Setup Configuration tab, expand the folder, expand advanced, expand thermal configuration, click on Cpu Thermal Configuration. Where you see Bi-directional PROCHOT# change the failsafe value and optimal value to disabled (double click the value to change it). After changing them save the file, and flash it via the method of yout choice, i used Easy Flash in the bios with a fat32 usb drive. Boot into windows and use dkillone's method of verifying that BD-PROCHOT is disabled.....nice isnt it. Sad that asus charged us this much for a computer and cant take 30 seconds to do this for us!! I need a job Asus, more then willing to fix your fubars!

Credit should go to dkillone, he had done this before I had, I just didnt find his post till after I posted last night. Anyone have any idea on how Optimus outputs when using iGFX ie is there a different vbios for the geforce? Lets just say I can enable optimus but it wont output (computer boots, gets into windows, just no output). Optimus is definately there as windows installs drivers and changes monitor settings, but I had to reflash bios blind and havent been ballsy enough to try it again.

I should also let you guys know that I did improve on what was stated in the first post I made. You can do what I posted there, or you can enable the thermal configuration menu in the bios (ie you can go into bios and turn this on or off, and some other choices as well) . To do this useing the same tool AMIBCP 4.5, open your choice of bios file for your computer. Under setup configuration click on advanced. Find the column that starts with Thermal Configuration. Double click the Access/Use parameter and change it from Default to USER. Expand the Advanced Folder and Click on the Thermal Configuration Folder. The second line down labelled thermal configuration change the Access/Use parameter to User as well. Save this file and flash it, go into your bios and go under the advanced menu, you will notice you can now go into the thermal config and enable BD-PROCHOT or disable it as you wish. You can also enable other hidden bios menus such as CPU configuration and Power & Performance by following the same steps as above for the respective menu. I am sorry if I am terrible at explaining stuff, hands on person here always been terrible at communication!

As far as memory goes, I have not tried anything myself. The issue with unhiding the Chipset menu for me has been that it is not a sub menu, but a main menu. Bein that the chipset menu doesnt show in the original bios, this is different then unlocking sub menus under an existing main menu. That being said I have tried to unlock the Chipset menu from my limited knowledge (I havent given up yet) but thus far I have had no luck. That being said......I can verify that if you change settings under the chipset category using AMIBCP and then save the file and flash it, the settings do take......I have thus far been attempting to enable Optimus as I really dont game much with this computer but wanted the ability to do so. I just figured out how to extract the vBios from the main bios on the n53 and am now looking at wether or not this is the way I want to try it or if I am going to try to change the defaults in the bios from checking the vbios to an actual setting. I am able to enable switchable graphics, but the issue it upon the flash and reboot the computer when using SG is supposed to look to the vbios to initialize the display. Being that ASUS didnt design the notebook with Optimus (stupid stupid stupid) they dont include vbios in our bios that works correctly, even though both computers appear to more or less share the same motherboard and from what I can tell we dont have optimus do to software not hardware limitations. I can verify that it boots with SG enabled it just never activates a display internal or external. It probably wont ever work, but it was attempting this that I figured the rest of it out so it was worth it anyway. If someone knows of another HM65 based maching from another manufacturer that is also using an ami APTIO bios that has the chipset category available stock, I am sure that I could get it unlocked for you. And to anyone haveing flash issues or needs to try to blindflash....I have found Aflash2.exe to be the WORST piece of garbage ever made for flashing bioses. I thought I had bricked my g53 beyond my ability to repair when I enabled SG in my first experiment, after 6 hours of disassembly, removing HD etc, and trying to flash using Aflash2, I finally got ahold of AFUDOS wich is the AMI tool to flash the AMI aptio bios (available on their site) and 15 minutes later in a move that would have required no removal of HD I had it blind flashed and the screen back to working. I really think Asus has a great product here but they need to seriously step up their customer support and service if they want to keep us as customers.

I know that people get eager when new things become available, but I feel that some points need to be addressed:

1) I would prefer that we NOT encourage people to mod their BIOS themselves. The settings that Asus use are based on recommendations from Intel. The BD-PROCHOT was implemented for a reason. I would prefer we tweak the settings when the TCC trips rather than disable the thermal protection all-together.

I would also prefer having a beta BIOS released from us rather than hundreds of self-modded ones. This way we can maintain a measure of Quality Control.

2) You cannot enable Optimus successfully. In order to have it work, all the output from the NVIDIA GPU needs to pass-thru the Optimus video path. On our mobos, the Optimus video path is bypassed, and the NVIDIA GPU feeds directly out. Ergo, the black screen when Optimus is enabled.

Also, with the low idle clocks, you will not gain much from Optimus.

3) I've forwarded a request to the R&D teams to evaluate having the temp menu exposed in future BIOS releases for Sandy-based gaming machines.

As stated earlier, I'd rather get a mod BIOS out for the masses than rather having them mod it themselves. Murphy is inevitable, and can cause people to have to pay for fixes, since self-modding the BIOS is an instant warranty void.